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Saturday, April 28, 2012

The grass is getting greener and my allergies are dying down, so that means its time to plant the crops. I thought since spring had sprung I would discuss the practice of farming and how it will evolve as we spread our metaphorical wings toward the galactic empire in space. Bearing in mind that what I propose here is only near future predictions and doesn't even touch on the future future of farming that will come after that. The two types of crops that humans mass produce for consumption are plants and animals, and to a lesser degree fungus, bacteria, and anything else our omnivorous stomachs will handle; including all sorts of chemical non-foods like margarine, Twinkies, and Viagra. Food production is a trillion dollar industry; namely because every single human is addicted to it. It's hard to stop eating; I tried it a couple of times (for a few hours.... while sleeping) and I really didn't like it ( I had to break the fast in the morning). Indeed, obesity has been called an epidemic in many parts of the Earth, but hopefully some of the future crop production that I will discuss below will stop all of that, by making food into a bland nutritious gruel that no one would eat for fun.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

My wife keeps telling me what she wants in her next house. "I guess I will just add it to my list," she says folding clothes, as she runs down why we need a bigger closet, or another bedroom with a luxury bath. I tell her that I think we should have a giant tilapia pool in the basement that filters through a subterranean hydroponic garden, that way we can grow our own meat and vegetables. She roles her eyes. I say it would also be nice if we had thrusters. "Thrusters?" she asks, (got her). "Yeah," I say, "How else will we maneuver in the vacuum of space. A good low energy ion thruster would be valuable on any space house just in case it needs to be moved out of the way of some space debris or something." Which got me thinking about other things that are valuable when designing useful space habitations and even how we could test them. I will discuss some of the subsystems necessary for life in space in this the third installment of my TIS guide.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

I had originally decided to write this blog as a way of showcasing my writing ability to potential publishers and editors at peer reviewed journals of science, as such I wrote from a perspective of a hard hitting science writer, aiming my arguments at a crowd of fellow scientists interested in such topics. That does not seem to be my audience, (if I have an audience). Furthermore, I wished to propose a world view that I discuss further in my introductory post (see The Transductionist). All of my posts thus far revolved around this world view and continuing posts will as well, but in the future I will write with a more general audience in mind. What you have seen if you have read this blog, is a group of articles that span my interest in understanding our universe and exemplify one piece of my persona or another; the cynic, the scientist, the scholar, and the joker. I will still focus on science and technology and how to integrate it into our future world, and I will still try to relay information about complex topics, but now I will
hopefully do it with all of the elements of my persona combined (A bit like Captain Planet). Perhaps, this will be a better interpretation of my true voice. And if editors and publishers have viewed this blog or do so in the future, they can look at some of my previous posts as evidence of the range of my work and send me a message if they want to offer me a job. Not holding my breath though, It's hard to break into writing as a career, and I've got a good job as a graduate student and don't intend to give it up, because its also hard to break into science (and if you don't think 'grad student' counts as a job, let me assure you that I work 6 to 7 days a week for peanuts and no pension plan; its a job).

Thanks for reading and let me know what you like because I'm looking for feedback, I'm looking to grow as a writer, to expand my mind, and perhaps to make someone else think like a transductionist.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

It has not escaped my notice that a new election year has come; which brings to mind politics and government in general. The world political systems are a mess; that much I think we can all agree on. From there the schools of thought begin to differ. Briefly, as I (and others) see it, there are two schools of thought about how governments should be run at least in American politics; to care or to be fair; also known as the left and the right. Another source of contention, of course, is the fight between the 'haves' and 'have nots'. This debate can be seen in the U.S. between the outraged wall street protesters who demand we tax the upper 1%, and those who invoke the Boston tea party and oppose any new taxes. Once again in history, each side has been misdirected to point their fingers at the other. However, there is no individual that we can hold accountable for the national debt, nor can we hold one group culpable for our economic instability; instead I posit that it is the system that has failed. Below, I discuss an idea that may fix it.